


It Took Us Saving The World

by AbschaumNo1



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bullying, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Past Relationship(s), bruce/betty is mostly mentioned, it's complicated - Freeform, this probably gives the wrong impression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-10 22:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbschaumNo1/pseuds/AbschaumNo1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the things Bruce expected to happen when he agreed to go with Natasha it wasn't meeting the guy he spent his teenage years with again.</p>
<p>Or: Bruce and Clint were best friends who spent their teenage years in the same orphanage, but lost contact after graduation. They meet again when they have to help save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Took Us Saving The World

**Author's Note:**

> This is my work for the Marvel Rarepair Exchange for tumblr user [spaceshipoftheseus](http://spaceshipoftheseus.tumblr.com) who had this really interesting prompt for this pairing. I enjoyed writing it, and I hope it's what they wished for.

_2012:_

Of all the things Bruce expected to happen when he accepted to go with Natasha, he hadn't expected to meet the guy again with whom he had spent most of his teenage years. To be honest he hadn't exactly thought he would ever see Clint again, but then they had lost contact shortly after Bruce had started university and Clint started working at the circus, both paths that one wouldn't expect to end in a giant battle in New York City, trying to prevent an alien invasion staged by a guy who was practically a Norse god, but also not really. It was complicated.

The thing was that Bruce still remembered being together with Clint all these years ago, and sometimes he found himself wishing that they had never lost contact. And now, now he wasn't quite sure where they stood; wasn't quite sure if Clint still wanted to be friends with him, or if attempting to reconnect with him would just end in disappointment because they would have to realise that they had nothing in common anymore. Not to mention that Bruce would most likely not be able to stay in one place long enough to reconnect with his former friend.

In the end Bruce kept his distance while they were still in New York, and took Tony up on an offer of his private jet taking him anywhere he wanted. He ended up not really talking to Clint at all.

It was several months after New York, when Clint tracked him down in eastern Africa. Bruce had gone back to helping people who needed it, and in the constant buzz of the people around him, he hadn't even had the time to think much about meeting Clint again. However, when the archer knocked on the door of the house he was living in he remembered the insecurities he had faced after the Chitauri invasion. Nevertheless, he smiled at Clint and motioned for him to come in.

“It's good to see you,” he said, as he moved over to the kitchen area, that really wasn't much more than a wood-fuelled stove. He could hear Clint put down his duffel bag next to the door.

“I'm sorry I didn't come earlier, Bobby,” Clint replied and from the sound of his voice Bruce just knew what kind of expression he had on his face. He felt like he was being transported back to the time they had spent together. No one had called him Bobby since then.

  


_1982:_

“You're new,” a voice said from somewhere behind Bobby. He turned around, searching for its source and found a boy, who was around his age, sitting on top of a wardrobe. He had short, sandy hair and blue eyes, and for some reason Bruce thought that he didn't look like the type the other kids liked to hang out with.

“I'm Bobby. I just arrived,” he replied. The other boy grinned at him.

“Nice to meet you Bobby. I'm Clint.” Clint jumped down from the wardrobe. “If you need anything feel free to ask me.”

It had been the beginning of a friendship that had at times caused the staff of the orphanage they lived in to find new grey hairs on their heads. Of all the boys living there, Robert Bruce Banner, known as Bobby to most and with a known track record of anger issues, had decided to befriend the local troublemaker Clinton Francis Barton, usually known as Clint.

It was a match made in heaven, because even though he caused about as much trouble as Clint did, Bobby also managed to keep his friend at least somewhat interested in school. They still landed in detention more often than not, but Bobby showed early on that he was exceptionally intelligent, and despite all the ways he used to let out his aggressions he never got behind on his school work, and somehow always managed to keep Clint from ditching his own.

It really wasn't like Clint didn't have a sharp mind of his own or anything, he just preferred to spend his time doing things that had nothing to do with school. It didn't exactly help the two of them that they were outsiders of some sorts at their school, partly because they were orphans, partly because of how they didn't let any of the others close enough to see anything beyond the obvious. They were seen as troublemakers, Bobby couldn't hold his emotions in check, and got angry a lot, and paired with the other students knowing that he was good at school didn't help either. People knew Clint for having a big mouth, being the one who never missed when throwing any kind of thing, and for hanging around “that Banner kid”, which was never good news in their eyes. Anyone who was friendly with that guy couldn't be right in the head themself. The two of them didn't mind; they had each other and that was enough.

Of course it wasn't all just joy and games all the time. Being outsiders meant that they had to put up with a lot of problems, compared to which the problems of other teenagers almost seemed petty, and which they didn't necessarily want to share with anyone. Having to put up with being called names and being shoved or tripped on school corridors wasn't exactly unusual for them. They put up with it sometimes, and sometimes Bobby reacted before he could help himself. Whatever the outcome, they dealt with it.

What become clear quite early on was that neither of them was good at talking about their feelings, nor did they want to. In the end they just didn't do it at all, and steered clear of any feelings that might come up between them. Thanks to this they never really addressed the way their relationship changed as they got older. If anyone had bothered to ask them they would have maintained that they were best friends, and if people would have remarked that they were awfully close for best friends, Clint would shrug and reply that they were just really close. “It's not like we'd want it any different with the shit we're going through together,” he used to say, while Bobby nodded along beside him.

The thing was that they both knew somehow that they weren't “just” best friends. They weren't stupid, and just because they didn't talk about their feelings didn't mean they weren't aware of them; their respective own that was. And really they were hormone driven teenagers, Bobby used to tell himself, it wasn't like it should be surprising if anything weird happened between them.

The first time anything really happened between them was when they were sixteen and fifteen respectively, when one of the kids from their school had said something to Bobby that had him seething with rage, and very close to throwing an actual punch. Luckily Clint had managed to intervene and pull his best friend out before anything bad happened. They had had to spend enough time that month in detention already, it wouldn't do any good if Bobby lost it now and got more detention than was absolutely necessary. They had a free period next anyways, and so Clint pulled him out of the building and to the dump that was the area behind the gym, a place where no one came unless they had to, or unless they were Clint and Bobby, who had soon found out that not even the worst bullied would follow them there. It was exactly the place they needed to be now. Once they had reached their little sanctuary, as shitty as it may be, Clint let go of Bobby, who took a deep breath.

“That was close,” Clint said. “I was already seeing you beating them up. Which they would have deserved, believe me I know that, but it wouldn't have been worth the trouble.”

“I know,” Bobby replied, and he would have fooled anyone but Clint with the calm expression on his face. As things stood, Clint just looked into his eyes and saw the rage still in there. He sighed.

“Well, at least we didn't get another detention, and it's not like there's much of the school year left before we don't have to see any of them for the summer.”

Bobby ran a hand through his hair, and smiled tensely at Clint. “Thanks for pulling me out back there.” Clint grinned at him.

“That's what friends are for, aren't they?”

“Yeah...” Bobby looked at him for a moment, his thoughts clearly far away, before he closed his eyes and let his body sag forward so that his forehead was resting against Clint's shoulder. “Damn, I just...” Clint could hear him grit his teeth in anger.

“Hey, it's fine,” he said, rubbing his back with a hand. Bobby didn't reply, but Clint could hear him take a deep breath, before he turned his head and nuzzled into Clint's neck with a small sigh. Clint couldn't help but tensing up. This was... new, and he didn't quite know what to make of it, but before he could ease himself back into the touch, Bobby withdrew and smiled at him sheepishly.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “that was..”

“It's fine,” Clint replied immediately, reaching out in invitation to show him that he was welcome to touch.

They looked at each other for a moment, and there was something in Bobby's eyes that Clint couldn't quite read. Bobby stepped closer, and now there was definitely something different about him, something that had Clint on edge, simply because he was unsure what this was going to be. At the same time he couldn't help the thought that while it was unusual to have Bobby stand so close, it wasn't entirely unpleasant. He didn't think about it too much though. In fact, he wasn't sure he even wanted to think a bout it.

In the end, Clint wasn't exactly surprised when Bobby stepped even closer and pressed their lips together without a lot of skill, but much force. Bobby pushed Clint back up against the wall, and Clint held on to him. Their teeth clanked together, and Bobby let out a frustrated sound, before they managed to change the angle and work around it.

Maybe it wasn't the perfect first kiss people dreamed of, but much later they would both remember it and think that it probably was the way it was supposed to be.

Being who they were, they didn't talk about that first kiss behind the gym. Instead they went on with their lives, not exactly like nothing happened, but with a definite attitude of ignoring the while thing as long as possible. Which in the end was the next time Bobby's emptions got close to boiling over again.

The first awkward kiss became a thing that happened when they needed to get away from it all. And then kisses became more of making out sessions. And finally angry making out sessions behind the gym were something that for some reason happened quite regularly between them. And, they both reasoned when their thoughts steered too close to the topic, as long as the other was okay with it, it was certainly not wrong to keep doing it. As long as the other students didn't find out, it was all fine.

But while the angry make out method was alright to deal with pent up frustration in the beginning, Bobby had always been angrier than Clint. At first he challenged the surplus of anger he felt into his work on science projects for school and into studying, especially physics and chemistry. But by the time he started his junior year that wasn't enough anymore.

What had begun as trying to understand science jut a little bit better with the help of small experiments conducted in a patch of forest far enough away from anyone who could stumble across it, had developed into a fascination with blowing up things, and building small explosives with the help of various things Bobby managed to liberate from the school, thanks to the trust of the science teachers, who, while wanting him to succeed in something he was good at, they were long enough in the job to have developed a healthy cynicism towards it, and just enough of a lax attitude to oversee things going missing as long as it wasn't too much and too obvious.. Clint, who had developed a certain talent for sneaking around and breaking into places, was a great help as well.

Seeing how people at the orphanage didn't exactly care what they got up to when they weren't at school so long as they didn't get into trouble, the two of them spent a lot of their free time at the little space they had made for themselves in the woods, Bobby acting on his fascination with explosions, and Clint climbing around in trees, and jumping between them like he was born to do it.

When the weather was too bad to spend time at their little shelter in the woods they could usually be found running around in the city, ducking into abandoned building and sneaking into places they weren't supposed to be in. Clint got them cigarettes (which they both hated) and their first alcohol (which they didn't dare to consume too much of in case anyone ant the orphanage caught them), and snuck them into the backs of cinemas, where they saw their fair share of movies they wouldn't have been able to see otherwise. After seeing Die Hard Clint developed a short obsession with John McClane and Bruce Willis, while they found Rambo III utterly boring and ended up making out in the back of the cinema, somehow managing to not draw attention to themselves.

At this point Bobby had already decided that he wanted to work towards a degree in physics after school, and he did his best to get the grades and SAT scores he needed. His last two years of high school were split pretty evenly between school work and being up to no good with Clint, and being maybe the slightest bit too close. They never dweled on the future, never talked about what would become of them and the relationship they never talked about actually being in.

Seven years after the two of them met Bobby moved away from the moderately large city they had lived in to start college, while Clint stayed and started doing work around the area, taking whatever jobs he could get. They still talked occasionally on the phone, but Bobby, who had started to go by Bruce now, was soon busy with his courses and the new people he met at college while Clint took up work with a circus that had passed through the city, and the ringmaster of which had agreed to take him with them. And then it wasn't long until they lost contact.

Clint had his stint with the circus that turned less than legal until SHIELD caught wind of him and brought him in. He became an agent and somehow after all the things that had happened and that the had done in his life, he helped save the world.

Bruce spent his time working on his degree in physics, and then studied biochemistry. It was when he was working on that second degree that he met Elizabeth Ross. Betty seemed to be all he had been missing from his life, and he found that he could be happy with her. They made plans for their future, worked together at Culver University, and then they started that fateful work for Betty's father.

Bruce couldn't say that he liked General Ross, but he put up with him for her sake, and it worked alright until the incident with the Hulk. That one fateful day put a sudden end to their relationship, simply due to the fact that Bruce was now on the run, and General Ross tried his best to catch him. And after he saw her again and, as Bruce himself would later put it, broke Harlem, he had come to the conclusion that she was better off without hi in her life, and while it hurt, he made good of his decision and never even thought about contacting her again.

  


_2012:_

As he sat on that couch watching Clint all these years later, Bruce, mused that maybe it had been fate that brought them together again. The two of them had changed since their ways had parted, but Bruce found that Clint's face was still as familiar as it had been.

“So,” he said after a moment, “SHIELD, huh? Sounds like you have come a long way.”

“Well, I'm not the only one,” the glint in Clint's eyes was almost painfully familiar, and Bruce found himself relaxing a bit.

“I would have thought you knew, with being a SHIELD agent and everything.”

Clint shook his head. “I had heard your name, but I never made the connection, and I never got to see your picture or anything, so I couldn't really recognise you, either. Nat would probably have figured it out, but I never told her about you.”

“So it really took us saving the world to meet again,” Bruce gave Clint a small smile, and the archer grinned back at him.

“Who would have expected us of all people to save the world?”

“No one, including us, I guess.”

“Least of all us,” Clint said with a scoff. “You were far too occupied with blowing up stuff and I was always hanging around watching you or sneaking into places where I wasn't supposed to be.”

“And when we weren't busy doing that we were making out with each other,” Bruce pointed out.

They were silent for a moment, before Clint spoke up again. “We never talked about it, did we?”

“We were teenagers, and on top of that we were spectacularly bad at the whole talking thing.”

Clint let out a groan. “Don't even remind me.”

There was another short silence, this time ended by Bruce. “I'm not even sure what it was between us.”

“Neither am I,” Clint replied. “But it was nice, I guess. Maybe a bit fucked up, but nice.”

“I think it was the best we could do at the time.” There was a hint of sadness in Bruce's smile, and before he could help himself Clint put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“I don't regret it. I think we both needed it at the time.”

“I think so, too.” Bruce leaned forward and rested his head against shoulder. After a moment he let out a huff of laughter. “Remember that first kiss behind the gym?” he asked, amusement clear in his voice.

“How could I forget? That was the worst kiss of my life.” He scoffed, and Bruce laughed softly.

“I'm fairly sure we both made up for it later”

“It was still terrible.”

Bruce leaned back again and looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “Do you want me to prove to you that I can do better now?”

“I wouldn't stop you,” Clint replied with a toothy grin that reminded Bruce of so many instances in the past, when they had bantered like this, and he had not been able to not take him up on the challenge. He found that, while so many things had changed, this was still exactly the way it had always been.

He leaned forward and took Lint’s face in his hands to pull him closer. “I will show you.” He was almost growling as he closed the distance between them to kiss Clint.

It was definitely better than that first kiss, all these years ago. He moved his lips softly against Clint's, one of his hands moving around until it rested at his neck. He slowly coaxed the other man's lips open, and then their tongues met. Just the barest of touches in the beginning, until Clint made an eager sound, and fisted his hands into Bruce's shirt to pull him closer. They tilted their heads, until their mouths slid together perfectly. Bruce could feel the soft fabric of Clint's t-shirt under his fingers, and the archer's fingers sliding over his torso until he had wrapped his arms wrapped around Bruce. Bruce sighed into the kiss, just before they had to break it to breathe.

“That certainly wasn't terrible,” Clint said after a moment.

Bruce smiled wryly. “I surely hope so. It wouldn't have proven the point if it was.”

Clint grinned at him, and for a moment they sat in companionable silence. Finally, the archer reached up and cupped Bruce's cheek.

“You're not gonna run away, are you?” he asked.

“No.” Bruce shook his head, and smiled. “Not unless you want me to.”

“Then I think we're fine.”

Clint pulled Bruce closer until their foreheads rested together, and they just sat there, sharing the moment with smiled on their faces.

Clint stayed with Bruce as long as he could, helping him care for the poor, and occasionally slipping out to do his own kind of helping (Natasha would probably have rolled her eyes at him and said something about how he should pretending that he wasn't a good man, before helping him to kick some ass). But in the end he still had a job that he had to attend to, and while Nick Fury had decided to overlook his absence for some time, he still needed him in action. When he left Bruce behind, it was with the promise that they would see each other again.

The didn't see each other until Christmas, three months later, when Clint appeared at Bruce's door again, this time with news from Tony. Bruce had heard about the Mandarin incident, but when Clint told him that it looked like Tony was planning to have the shrapnel in his chest removed, Bruce decided that he was needed in New York. They had had contact occasionally, while Bruce was away, and he felt that he owed it to Tony to be there.

And this was how the two of them found themselves in New York City just in time for Clint's birthday, something they never got to celebrate because Clint had to head out for a mission again. He grumbled about it, and how the last birthday celebration he had had had been that time Natasha had collected his arrows for him before he could and tied a bow around them. Bruce had smiled and given him a kiss and said, “I'll think of something for when you get back.” Clint was still grumbling, but Bruce could tell that he just wanted to get it over with now.

  


_2014:_

“What the hell, Nat?” Clint sounded like he was already developing a headache, and Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. “So you're telling me SHIELD's gone to shit and you're gonna deal with it, but you don't need help?” There was a pause when Natasha replied, but Clint rolled his eyes. “Bullshit, Nat. You're gonna need every bit of help that you can get, of course I'm coming.”

Bruce sighed and got up to pluck the phone out of Clint's hand. “Hello Natasha, how are you?” he said.

There was a huff of laughter on the other end of the line, before Natasha replied. “I've been better, but it's okay. Could you tell Clint that I don't need him here? Cap and I already got help, and we've got this covered. And Clint hasn't gotten a decent holiday in years.”

“I'll do my best. Good luck, and my greetings to Steve,” Bruce said with a chuckle. He barely waited for her thanks before he hung up and turned around to Clint, who was pacing the patio of the small house by the beach they had rented.

“I can't believe that she's gonna head into this alone. There's no way she'll survive this. And then I'll have the whole “And where were you, Clint?” situation on my hands again.”

Bruce shook his head and sighed. “Calm down, Clint. If she says she can handle this alone, she can handle it. Besides Steve's with her.”

Clint came to a stop in front of Bruce and let his head fall against his shoulder. “Why does this stuff always happen to me?” he whine. “Here I was, thinking that I could have a decent holiday with you for once, but no, Natasha has to find out that SHIELD is compromised.”

Bruce put his arm around Clint to rub his back. “I won't ask you not to worry, but she says she can handle it so you're gonna have to trust her. We're heading back to New York next week, and then you can make sure she hasn't gotten herself killed. Even though I'd wager that we should probably worry more about Steve than her.” He pulled back and grabbed Clint's hand. “Come on. I think we were on our way to the beach when Natasha interrupted.”

Clint smiled as he let himself be pulled along to the stairs and down onto the sand. Maybe this whole thing Natasha and Steve had going on in DC would turn out to be even worse than she had let on, but for now they were on holiday and didn't care about it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://abschaumno1.tumblr.com).


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